‘Fake drugs cause death of 2,50,000 children every year’ warn US doctors

Doctors have asked for an urgent international effort to combat the harmful effect of bad drugs that are thought to kill hundreds of thousands of people around the world everywhere.

The doctors cautioned that an increase in counterfeit and cheap grade medicines means that 2,50,000 children are thought to die because of them.

A large number of children are thought to die due to cheap grade vaccines and antibiotics which are meant to treat acute infections and diseases such as hepatitis, yellow fever and meningitis.

“The penalties are a slap on the hand, but we are talking about murder by fake medicine here,” said Joel Breman, a senior scientist emeritus at the US National Institutes of Health in Maryland.

Writing in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, doctors from the US government, universities, hospitals and the pharmaceutical firm Pfizer warn that the rise in “falsified and substandard medicines” has become a “public health emergency”. On top of the direct harm they cause, bad drugs are a major driver of antimicrobial resistance, which fuels the rise of superbugs. “This is an urgent public health issue and we need to take action,” Breman said.